Attendant spirit who hovers
over my bedside before I wake,
listening in darkness of dawn
to quiet breath, visible cycle
and image of prior life, how
you are like the frost forming
on the windows outside, an
awareness growing more aware,
a crystal’s casing shearing into
sharp and liquid both, that I
should ask you: Is God so like
a human chest rising and falling
that you find peace next to me?
Or is God so like a high cliff,
that when I wake you fly, and
my gaze twists upward after you
like ravens into the sky?